The Secret of Harmonious Living

At this the landlord became incensed, and asked him if he hadn’t known quite well beforehand that there was no high wall around the orchard to protect it from strong winds. The poor gardener, disheartened by these words, went quietly away. A friend of the landlord, who was with him at the time, heard the entire conversation, and when the gardener had left, he said to the landlord, "How hard-hearted of you. You showed the poor man no mercy." The landlord replied, "You educated people probably think that one man is responsible for another, but, in actual fact, it is God alone who is the provider of sustenance. He does provide it to all regardless of the circumstances." One hesitates to speak when confronted by the powerful. But in the presence of the weak there is no such feeling of constraint. What often happens is that one is so carried away by one's own loquacity that one fails to give due consideration to the actual matter in hand. One is less likely then to admit the truth of the matter, or to do justice to it. Handling Rough Situations You have probably seen manufacturers of glass frames scoring the surfaces of sheets of glass with a pen-like instrument, then neatly snapping them into two. The cutting edge of this tool is made up of small razor-edged diamonds. Even the huge drills used for boring through hundreds of feet of rock strata in the search for minerals are fitted with diamond cutting edges. It is the extreme hardness of the diamond which makes these tools so effective. The diamond is, in fact, the hardest known naturally-occurring substance. It cannot even be scratched. Put it in acid and there will be no effect. But there is another aspect to this wonderful stone. If it is heated to a very high